Chrysalis
by KitsuneGirl911
Summary: Faust muses as he makes a bloody transformation, both in body and in spirit.


AN: Hey all, I just rediscovered this piece I wrote back in April 2013. I hope you enjoy it.

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Chrysalis

KitsuneGirl911

He'd heard that going from life to Death and back again could grant a person strength beyond _any_ of their current imaginings. Yoh was an example for sure. However he was not so greedy as to break the sanctity of Death for pure power. To journey to a point just closing in on Death's first breathy shades and then managing to drag yourself back... If a doctor couldn't do it, who could? The self-surgery was grueling, but what surgery isn't? The pain had been preemptively blocked with an extra dose of morphine, and he could feel a real change happening, but it was too slow… He needed to quicken pace!

Rearrange, replace, rebuild… Fortify the body along with the mind. Blood. There was so much. Clean it away, and again the red comes sliding into one's vision. But he had done all he could now, and more than that on top, just to be absolutely sure it was enough. Pushed well past his body's limits, he covered himself in layers and layers as though that could possibly block out everything. Yet somehow those layers built up enough to do so.

He was left alone in the darkness of his room at the mercy of his own thoughts.

_-Two Days Later-_

It was silent. He was safe, for now. Inside his small room, laying in the darkness. Haunted by the memory of his sins. He could see them, repeating over and over like an endless movie. All the people he'd killed, all the pain and suffering he'd caused, …loving Eliza. That was the worst. He began to get the feeling he knew how that boy in 'A Clockwork Orange' had felt…

But he was suffering now, oh!- how he was suffering. And he enjoyed every minute of it. It was slightly masochistic, he knew, but what did it matter? Only that he should suffer, and continue doing so until he was purged of sin. It had been forty-eight hours since he'd last had any morphine, and the frequent muscle spasms were becoming quite annoying. And though he'd hardly moved for that entire time, his heart raced with a subtle type of fear. But the symptom was less painful than the cure. The cure for his darkness, the very same darkness he now resided in.

They all told him this was exactly what he'd always needed, to stop being such a 'crazy addict'. What did they know; there was no cure, not for his _life_! It was partly their fault as well, for bringing him down like this, showing him false friendship. They were really Yoh's friends, and they were scared of him and what he could do. There was no such thing as friendship when fear was involved. They could just pile their hassles on him and leave him to bleed. Poor Manta, getting in the way like that... He had to take the opportunity to rile his opponent; he had to hurt this poor boy. He had to help him, and so he cut and cut, peeling back layers of skin to look deeper and discover the cause of Manta's ills. He had almost done it before he'd been stopped. He'd almost found the cure for that poor boy's life. The four walls that surrounded him gave no comfort; instead they seemed to close in on him, crushing him with their silent stares.

But ah!- to be free from this, if only for a little while, like before. Eliza. Her name was torture, her name was bliss, and it was everything in between. She took him from the grave he had dug for himself, took him from the darkness, letting her brilliant light in to fill him with joy. But joy was not meant to be his. She had taken him from his soul, sparked an obsession that would rear its ugly head as she died. It was _obsession_ that drove him to study the forbidden art of necromancy, _obsession_ that led him to kill for her sake. Not love.

His little box of solitude was shattered when she waltzed into his life. Yes, it was a dance- a dance of death. A dance of deception and lies, a dance with true evil. Evil wasn't something that happened to someone else, it was here, here inside his heart. It lurked with demon's wings to rise up and swallow him whole. She could never be there, never be there in his little box of solitude. If only though, sometimes, he wished… He wished… But this was subtle retribution for the sin of his family name. The sin his ancestor stained himself with when he created that pact with Mephistopheles. The sin he himself was cursed with.

But was it a curse? Was it not instead a blessing? He never had to worry about being hurt by anyone; they couldn't get close to him in the first place. Yes, that was a blessing. But was it really worth it to not be hurt, then to have someone to count on? Someone to be there for, someone to have there. Someone to love, to be loved by. Ah, such bliss as that was not meant for him. And it never would be.

He cries sometimes at night, hurt by the emptiness of his soul, the bleakness of his existence. He can never sleep, not since her death, when his _obsession_ took over and started running his life. And it all ended, with him being useless as Anna got her soul back, saved her from paradise. He'd wanted to end it, then, but Yoh hadn't let him. For once in his life, someone cared. He'd laugh at it now though. Yoh didn't care; he just didn't want someone's death on his shoulders. Another guilt added to his pitiful life. That's all he was, a guilt that people had to bear. Well, no more.

He'd end it all. Tonight. Fortify the body along with the mind.

Didn't he _deserve_ his peace, tonight of all nights? He would be free from needing the box's isolation, free from all the guilt and shame, the sadness and anger… Free! He tore at the walls, screaming out all that intense power welling up from deep within until he had to stop for oxygen. His triumphant cry continued on in soundless waves of energy radiating out from the broken remains of that damned box with its toppled walls…!

There was a soft presence at his side, and almost before he sensed that presence he knew exactly who it was. His dearest Eliza, come to help peel off the layers of discarded feelings and torturous remembrances. She was here to shuck off the past and cover him with something new, something clean and bright… a future.

He gingerly got up off his rarely-used bed, stepping out of the piles of torn blankets, blood-covered bandages, and once-pristine sheets that he had been cocooned in; he was leaving behind that horrid _obsession_. And with his first step he walked towards the light, heading for his wife to feel her cleansing touch again. Eliza was the most steadfast support that would ever reside in his heart; he knew she'd meet him halfway.

With a small and secret smile Faust embraced Eliza, both of them reveling in the brilliant dawn of a fresh new start.


End file.
